Mostly I agree, mainly because they support better encapsulation. That is you can add additional logic into the getters and setters (for example to perform validation, data formatting etc) which don't need to be visible to other classes (or even within the same class).
There is a (albeit slight) performance hit with using getters and setters, so there are times where direct access to instance variables is a good thing. I'd also consider the value of them for use within Nested Classes a bit limited.
Brenden
| miga <[email protected]>
Sent by: [email protected] 21/01/2009 04:11 PM
|
|
On Jan 21, 7:03 am, BillyRay <[email protected]> wrote:
> What are the rules or guidelines for deciding when it is appropriate
> to use the getter/setter methods to access instance variables in
> another method inside of a class versus accessing the variables
> directly?
It is always better to access variables with getter and setter
methods. This way, you ensure they cannot be accessed directly. If you
use Netbeans, there is a refactor task which allows you to transform
your code to always do that.
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